Seeing as I am roughly half way through my residency in Turkey, I feel that now is a proper time to discharge many of the reflective thoughts that have been floating around my head recently. Being abroad is a strange experience. It takes place both up close, spontaneously unfolding right in front of your eyes, and from afar, solidifying slowly in the back of your head. You assume the limbotic identity of both a participant and an observer, struggling to embrace the society you are surrounded by while simultaneously asserting the culture you brought with you.
Fortunately, Turkey does not lend itself well to this dichotomy. The inescapably affable nature of many Turkish people and their communities creates an environment of constant invitation so conducive to eating, drinking, and talking, that I feel a tinge of guilt when not participating in some combination of the three. The subtle beauty of Istanbul's sun stained mosques and cramped streets do nothing to remedy this ever swelling desire to explore, and though the city's sprawl carries on in all directions in a seemingly infinite stretch of terracotta, stone, and cats, it has a way of wrapping you in the warmest bear hug you have ever received, reassuring you that you are exactly where you need to be.
But it is imperative to remember where this perspective is coming from. As impartial as we would like to be, our preconceived notions of any foreign country hinder our ability to experience their communities in a truly unadulterated way. This obstacle is not only present when traveling in other nations: even when traveling between states in America it is hard to shake off the stereotypes that are associated with different regions and their people. When these prejudices are inevitably challenged and you are forced to confront the unexpected, it can lead to a brief, yet potent, feeling of isolation.
It is usually under these circumstances that I retreat to my enclave of fellow American expatriates. By no means would I suggest that these friends are anything but some of the brightest and most genial people I have met on this trip, but there is an indefensible peculiarity about surrounding yourself with your own ilk during an experience that is supposedly motivated by a lust for the unknown. Seeking out the familiar in a new environment is completely natural and healthy, but a reliance on the comfort of the known can easily devolve into apathy, keeping you from going out and absorbing the greater world around you.
The quiet struggle of the abroad experience is between finding a home within a foreign community and continually thrusting yourself beyond what you have already become acquainted with. This push and pull plays out both externally, in the host society in which you are a guest, and internally, as you strive to get the most out of your brief time overseas, and the caution that accompanies this realization is why I now find myself both inspired and reserved.
This dualistic relationship can perhaps best be explained through my recent trip to Cappadocia: a region of Central Anatolia with a topographical personality similar to something out of a Dr. Seuss book. The landscape, with its elaborately carved cliff-face fortresses and towering natural stone obelisks, was wholly alien to me. After a few days, however, the small town in which I was staying had become an oasis of familiarity surrounded by the extraordinary terrain. This affinity was most likely the result the hospitality of the town's inhabitants as well as the high concentration of tourists that were staying there, which lead me to ponder a seemingly appropriate question: was the "authentic" Cappadocia experience to be found in the tourist hub of Göreme, or was it out amongst the strange pillars and labyrinthine canyons of the countryside?
Ultimately I realized that the question was irrelevant. Trying to find some sort of authenticity in any experience implies that there is a wrong way and a right way to go about it, that there are rules by which the experience is governed, and, most damaging of all, that there is a possibility of failure. You cannot fail going abroad. Your experienced is measured by no standards except your own, so if you "fail" it is your own doing. Everybody who makes the decision to uproot and place themselves, physically and culturally, into a different society does it for their own unique reasons. I will admit, sometimes upon hearing those reasons I am forced to bite my tongue, but in the end, you are the final judge of what you gained on these brief trips. Just get out of the house every once in a while.
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